Recent advancements in ultra-low-power machine learning (TinyML) hardware promises to unlock an entirely new class of smart applications. However, continued progress is limited by the lack of a widely accepted benchmark for these systems. Benchmarking allows us to measure and thereby systematically compare, evaluate, and improve the performance of systems and is therefore fundamental to a field reaching maturity. In this position paper, we present the current landscape of TinyML and discuss the challenges and direction towards developing a fair and useful hardware benchmark for TinyML workloads. Furthermore, we present our four benchmarks and discuss our selection methodology. Our viewpoints reflect the collective thoughts of the TinyMLPerf working group that is comprised of over 30 organizations.
@article{arxiv.2003.04821,
title = {Benchmarking TinyML Systems: Challenges and Direction},
author = {Colby R. Banbury and Vijay Janapa Reddi and Max Lam and William Fu and Amin Fazel and Jeremy Holleman and Xinyuan Huang and Robert Hurtado and David Kanter and Anton Lokhmotov and David Patterson and Danilo Pau and Jae-sun Seo and Jeff Sieracki and Urmish Thakker and Marian Verhelst and Poonam Yadav},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.04821},
year = {2021}
}